The woman who caused a massive panic on a crowded subway train by releasing a swarm of crickets admitted to The Post on Friday that she orchestrated the disgusting stunt in an attempt to go viral on social media.

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“I have been doing these pranks for four years now,” self-promoting actress Zaida Pugh said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them.”

Pugh, known for a series of bizarre online pranks, said she brought 300 crickets and 300 worms onto the D train Wednesday and had a friend flip the insects into the air — freaking out those straphangers who hadn’t been in cahoots with her.

“Basically the people that is attacking me is a part of the stunt,” she said, adding her friends “also do their own comedy skits online as well.”

But things got even worse when an innocent passenger pulled the emergency brake as the D train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge. Riders were stuck in the cricket-filled car — with no air conditioning — for 30 minutes.

“The emergency brake was pulled,” Pugh said. “We were not expecting that to happen at all.”

Another unplanned aspect was Pugh urinating on the floor of the subway car.

“I did [urinate] but didn’t purposely mean to,” Pugh said. “It was very hot and I was holding my bladder. When I realized we weren’t going anywhere, I said, ‘I’m gonna just let it out.’ ”

She was taken to Methodist Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

She stayed in character as a homeless person trying to sell crickets, thinking that would help her avoid arrest.

But a police source told The Post that Pugh could be charged in connection with the chaos.

Zaida PughFacebook

Straphangers were appalled to learn it was the work of a publicity hound.

“My father works for transit and he’s gonna have to be the person who cleans that car covered in urine and crickets and worms,” said Brooklyn resident Eddie ­Going.

“And you know what’s worse, the emergency brake was pulled. So essentially, one little gag caused thousands upon thousands of people their time, when they were trying to get home.”

Pugh defended the videos as way to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

“Not everybody is gonna like my pranks,” she said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them. People get mad, of course, but I will continue to do it until they wake up.”

She has posted several ­attention-grabbing online videos in the past — some more disturbing than others.

In 2015, she posted a bloody video that purported to show a woman stabbing her baby to death in an insane revenge plot on her boyfriend.

“#WTF “Mother” Kills her baby then post the video online for her baby father to see,” she wrote in tagging the video.